Costumes
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Tag to "Apocalypse Rising". Garak returns to his shop after serving his sentence for trying to hijack the Defiant. He and Ziyal discuss, among other things, a human holiday called Halloween.


Costumes

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_

Copyright: Paramount

Garak had been imprisoned before, and a Federation holding cell was relatively benign. Still, living behind a force field seemed to get more difficult as he grew older. He had found it necessary to retreat a little further than usual inside the fortress of his mind, and as a result, he felt a certain surreal detachment from reality when he emerged.

The Promenade was a dizzying whirl of colors, sounds and smells: alien sweat, fried food, dabo machines beeping and flashing inside Quark's Bar, too-bright lights gleaming off the metal walls. The crowd jostled him; he muttered automatic apologies and pasted on a smile, trying not to make it obvious how short of breath he felt.

He made straight for his tailor shop, his own pocket of darkness, warmth and solitude to hide in. He had spent most of his time in the cell designing the loveliest clothes he could think of, and he was eager to make those visions a reality. (The fact that most of those were intended for someone with uniquely colored skin, somewhere between Cardassian gray and Bajoran rose, had not escaped him. How impractical. But maybe he could make just one.)

He reached for the keypad by the door, about to type his code, and glanced sideways.

What he saw stopped him short.

Someone had changed the window display. Usually he kept it plain and simple – he was the only tailor on Deep Space Nine, after all, no need to make a show – but someone had switched the evening dress and tuxedo with a pair of bizarre-looking costumes. The female mannequin wore a low-cut, sequined black gown and a pointed, wide-brimmed hat with an orange ribbon. The male mannequin wore a tuxedo not unlike the usual one, except for the high collar and the long cloak lined in red satin. Someone had even posed the mannequins elaborately: the male held the female pinned, his head lowered to her neck, while she held a thin, pointed wooden wand to his head. It was surpisingly erotic.

At their feet lay a plastic humanoid skull, a stuffed animal resembling a black Terran cat, and a round orange fruit, hollowed out and carved to resemble a smirking face. Garlands of artificial autumn leaves and spiderwebs were draped along the walls.

Garak blinked hard, several times, and rubbed his hand over his face to make sure he wasn't still locked up, and imagining things. Then he shook his head and unlocked the door.

"Garak, hello!" said a warm female voice. "I wasn't sure I'd get everything ready in time. What do you think of my display? Is it all right?"

A Cardassian woman in a white dress came hurrying out from behind the counter, her black braid swinging behind her, hands outstretched, smiling in welcome.

For a moment his eyes blurred, and he thought he was looking at Mila, or one of the girls he'd been infatuated with in his boyhood. Several of them had starring roles in his inner landscape. But then she came closer, and he recognized her skin tone, as well as the three delicate ridges on her nose. Tora Ziyal.

Of course. He remembered now. She had visited him once in the cell, and looked at him with such devastating compassion in her eyes that he'd have done anything to make her go away. Asking her to look after the shop for him had seemed like a simple solution. It wasn't as if he kept anything suspicious in there, anyway. Even if she were spying on Gul Dukat's behalf, all she'd find would be rolls of cloth and sewing equipment.

Garak hadn't expected the impact it would have, letting someone else into his shop. His hideout. His sanctuary.

When was the last time anyone had welcomed him home? He'd grown so used to his solitude. Losing it hurt, like the burn that came from disinfecting a wound.

It was to disguise that pain that he snapped at her: "What in the name of Old Hebitia have you done to my shop?"

She stepped back, twisting her fingers together nervously. "It's – um – there's a festival coming up next week. A Human one."

"I gathered as much, but what does that have to do with those outlandish costumes?"

She locked her fingers behind her back and straightened up, visibly gathering her strength. "It's a witch and a vampire. Monsters from Terran mythology. The idea behind the holiday is, you dress up as what you're afraid of in order to scare it away. You'd be amazed how many orders for costumes I've been getting, and not just from the Humans, either. Everyone's afraid lately. We all need some kind of outlet, even a silly one."

That, he thought sardonically, was even truer than she knew.

He walked over to the display, now visible from the back, and ran one hand over the smooth satin of the "vampire's" cloak. He checked the stitching. Very neat, almost as neat as his, and no cloth wasted.

"Where did you learn to sew?"

"I learned the basics from my mother, when I was a child. Nerys, the O'Briens and your state-of-the-art equipment helped me with the rest."

"Not bad … not bad at all."

"Thank you."

He didn't even need to turn around; her smile was obvious in her voice. How relieved she was to have his approval! Being someone's mentor was an alarming idea. He had had a mentor of his own once – Enabrain Tain – and look how that had turned out. But on the other hand – if he could teach someone to make pretty, useful things, add beauty to the world instead of ugliness …

"Garak?"

"Hmm? Excuse me." He smoothed his features before he turned around.

"Why were you in that cell?"

His mask held, but only barely; he had a nasty suspicion that he resembled the grinning orange fruit in the window. He stared over Ziyal's shoulder, unable to face her scrutiny head-on. _Damn it._ All these years in the Obsidian Order, training himself to be the stuff of traitors' nightmares, and it was this slip of a girl who made him nervous?

"A simple misunderstanding, my dear, I assure you."

"For six months." The irony in her voice was so subtle, a non-Cardassian might not even have noticed.

"Yes, well, the Constable has been distracted, to say the least. Becoming a Solid was quite an ordeal for him. Speaking of Odo, I hope he's been keeping this place safe while I was gone?"

"Father used to do the same thing." Ziyal crossed her arms in a contemplative manner, like a spectator in a museum.

"What – keep the Promenade safe? Well, that depends on your perspective … "

"No, change the subject to deflect my questions. If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to."

"I wish you wouldn't compare us like that. The honorable Gul and I are nothing alike."

She had the temerity to giggle.

He made eye contact, finally giving in to his bewildered curiosity about this woman. Dr. Bashir, at this point, would have probed him for more information about his imprisonment, made up an outrageous cloak-and-dagger story, or assumed what he thought was a knowing and conspiratorial air that only made him look younger and more charmingly naïve. Ziyal was the only person he had ever met who just let him be.

It was this acceptance, oddly enough, that made him want to tell her. To test her.

"Would you believe me," he said, "If I told you I tried to destroy the Founders' homeworld? With Dr. Bashir, Constable Odo and Captain Sisko still on it?"

He stepped a little closer to her than most people would find comfortable, staring into her eyes, waiting to catch that oh-so-familiar flash of terror. And he saw it, oh yes; after all, Ziyal knew he'd been in the Order, and she was no fool.

But then she blinked, and in the sweep of her long eyelashes, he saw that her fear was tangled up with something else.

Understanding.

It was the same look she'd given him from the opposite side of the force field: not the pity of a naïve young girl, but the shared acknowledgement of darkness in the galaxy, from someone who had seen it too.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I can believe that. You did it for Cardassia, didn't you? Because of the war the Dominion started between you … us … and the Klingons."

"You don't sound surprised."

"In the Breen labor camp, I saw two of the other prisoners fight to the death for a pack of stale ration bars." Her tone was matter-of-fact, not asking for sympathy, which meant she was probably telling the truth. "And then the winner – the killer – gave all the food to her little brother, who was too sick to work. The child survived that time, although he died a few months later … I used to imagine the rest of the galaxy would be like the Celestial Temple in comparison. But I've found it's not much different, just on a bigger scale."

"Hm. Yes. It is all rather contradictory, isn't it?"

They shared a wry smile at the contradictory nature of the galaxy. She really did have a beautiful smile. He found himself standing straighter, as if some intangible burden had been lifted off his shoulders.

"All right, then." _Enough of this._ "May I see the accounts and inventory?"

"Over here." She reached into a drawer and handed him a padd.

He withdrew into his office (keeping the door open – no sense in locking himself up again if he didn't have to) in order to check her calculations. If they were correct, which they seemed to be, Ziyal had increased his profits by a modest, but pleasant amount while he had been gone.

Apparently, people weren't as averse to buying from a Cardassian-Bajoran hybrid as one might think. Maybe it was her manners that did it. She came across as so sweet and straightforward. Garak himself had spent so long learning how to frighten people that he'd forgotten how to stop. No matter how hard he tried to seem harmless, people still recoiled from him.

Except for Dr. Bashir … and except for Ziyal.

He peered through the spiky latticework of his office door at her as she stood by a shelf, refolding some shirts a careless customer had left in a pile. Her slender hands smoothed the fabric so carefully, as if she appreciated the crisp lightness of the cotton as much as he did. The bright colors blazed like autumn leaves against the light gray of her skin and the white of her dress.

She shouldn't wear white, he thought. She deserved strong colours – kanar blue, blood red – because she was one of the strongest people he'd ever met. But in another sense, the innocent, girlish white was the perfect choice for her. It was a disguise more effective than any Halloween costume she might make.

He touched the wrong key on his padd. It beeped a warning: _Are you sure you wish to delete this file?_

He hissed in annoyance and hit _No._

Ziyal looked over at him and raised her brow ridges.

"Just a typo," he said casually, waving a hand. "Carry on."


End file.
